WELL, somewhere in there’s got to be Brad Pitt,” Joosephine Cox laughed.

“And a British actress preferably, if I have a choice — British and bubbly. I’ll be able to go to premieres and wear my best frock.”

It’s obvious that Josephine Cox, who was born and brought up in Derwent Street, Blackburn, is excited about the possibility of her 2010 book Blood Brothers being turned in to a film.

The story tells of a woman engaged to marry ‘the vile brother’ while being in love with the younger, and infinitely more decent brother.

“Please everyone keep your fingers crossed for me,” Jo pleads from her home in Bedfordshire.

“I’ve signed the first draft contract for Blood Brothers, which would be wonderful.

“But it doesn’t yet mean it will go through to be made.

"The option stays with the company for a couple of years, then they can either do it or not.

“I don’t know why, out of all the books, that it’s come for Blood Brothers. Now I’m just waiting for the second contract.”

While this is the first time any contracts have been signed, it’s not the first time Jo’s tales have been tipped for the big screen: David Attenborough wrote to her after reading Whistledown Woman, saying he wanted to be the one to make it in to a ‘magnificent big movie’.

“At the time he was contracted to Steven Spielberg, so he asked me to contact him after a few years... but I never did,” Jo said.

However, a lack of silver screen action has scarcely stalled her career, with February seeing the release of her 37th novel, Midnight — a dark tale about a man whose life has been taken over by a nightmare he’s endured his entire life.

With a new love in his life, Jack is persuaded to visit a psychoanalyst who uncovers the shocking truth: It’s not a figment of his imagination, Jack is re-living a true memory from his childhood.

As ever, Jo’s imagination has been fuelled by her colourful childhood in Blackburn — the place she still calls home, despite having been wrenched away by her mother aged just 14.

Jack returns to his roots and the place of his nightmares, Bower Street.

“Moving away was traumatic,” she said.

“We knew things were rocky but not that it was so bad that mum needed to run away.

"The sad thing was that my mum came out of that relationship and went into an even worse one.

“There is a mindset of feeling it’s their fault when women are in these situations.”

Jo visits Blackburn when work allows and her brother Bernard makes regular trips to her home.

On a recent trip, she let him read some of her next book Three Letters, where some of the action takes place in Addison Street.

“I have never seen him laugh so much. It’s exactly as I remember it and he even went to take some pictures of it for me,” she recalled.

“It’s because I love Blackburn: Every cobble of every street, the stained glass over the doors.

“When I was growing up, you knew everybody. The women would come in talking to my mum, talking naughty, but I captured it all in my mind and the stories are coming out... one by one.”

Jo spoke out earlier this month to defend libraries under threat from council cost-cutting measures, claiming they are ‘cultural and very necessary’.

She said: “The people who work there are founts of knowledge and experience. They hold classes there and events.

"You can get social interaction there, internet access and you can keep abreast of technology and research; it goes on and on.

“It says in the 1964 [Public Libraries and Museums] Act libraries must be spared from cuts and if threatened the central government must intervene.

“Now that’s what we’ve got to fight for; we’ve got to get them intervening to keep them open.”

“Four hundred are under threat and I think that is appalling.”

Coun Damian Talbot, executive member for leisure and culture at Blackburn with Darwen Council, has said ‘reduced opening hours’ and fewer book purchases would be likely, with the reviews ongoing until March 7.